A Beleaguered City eBook

‘Dear friend,’ he said, ’compose
thyself. Have you never discovered yet how strong
is self-delusion? There will be no lying of which
they are aware. Figure to yourself what a stimulus
to the imagination to know that he was here, actually
here. Even I—­it suggests a hundred
things to me. The Sisters will have said to him
(meaning no evil, nay meaning the edification of the
people), “But, Pierre, reflect! You must
have seen this and that. Recall thy recollections
a little.” And by degrees Pierre will have
found out that he remembered—­more than could
have been hoped.’

‘Mon Dieu!’ I cried, out of patience,
’and you know all this, yet you will not tell
them the truth—­the very truth.’

‘To what good?’ he said. Perhaps
M. le Cure was right: but, for my part, had I
stood up in that pulpit, I should have contradicted
their lies and given no quarter. This, indeed,
was what I did both in my private and public capacity;
but the people, though they loved me, did not believe
me. They said, ’The best men have their
prejudices. M. le Maire is an excellent man;
but what will you? He is but human after all.’

M. le Cure and I said no more to each other on this
subject. He was a brave man, yet here perhaps
he was not quite brave. And the effect of Pierre
Plastron’s revelations in other quarters was
to turn the awe that had been in many minds into mockery
and laughter. ‘Ma foi,’ said Felix
de Bois-Sombre, ’Monseigneur St. Lambert has
bad taste, mon ami Martin, to choose Pierre Plastron
for his confidant when he might have had thee.’
‘M. de Bois-Sombre does ill to laugh,’
said my mother (even my mother! she was not on my
side), ’when it is known that the foolish are
often chosen to confound the wise.’ But
Agnes, my wife, it was she who gave me the best consolation.
She turned to me with the tears in her beautiful eyes.

‘Mon ami,’ she said, ’let Monseigneur
St. Lambert say what he will. He is not God that
we should put him above all. There were other
saints with other thoughts that came for thee and
for me!’

All this contradiction was over when Agnes and I together
took our flowers on the jour des morts to the
graves we love. Glimmering among the rest was
a new cross which I had not seen before. This
was the inscription upon it:—­

A PAUL LECAMUS
PARTI
LE 20 JUILLET, 1875
AVEC LES BIEN-AIMES

On it was wrought in the marble a little branch of
olive. I turned to look at my wife as she laid
underneath this cross a handful of violets. She
gave me her hand still fragrant with the flowers.
There was none of his family left to put up for him
any token of human remembrance. Who but she should
have done it, who had helped him to join that company
and army of the beloved? ‘This was our
brother,’ she said; ’he will tell my Marie
what use I made of her olive leaves.’